Does Food Justice Only Mean Eating It and Not Running It?

Here is a question that is running around the streets the last few days from a few folks. When locals talk about food justice it usually means getting food to the poor or getting minorities to eat better food.

My question is; What about delivering justice? What about managing justice? Where are the minority and poor managers, planners, designers, coordinators, speakers, professionally paid contractors in the food justice network?

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Permalink Reply by Robert L. Jeffrey Sr. on October 30, 2009 at 5:31pm: The primary purpose of the clean greens farm movement is to create a model for ownership of a food justice process. We have control over the land. We control the seed selection, the planting nurturing and the harvesting of the food. We also control the distribution and marketing of the food. Food justice ultimately should bring community empowerment both as it relates to the economic and the physical/emotional health of the community. In addition true food justice provides a sustainable platform for addressing other situations of injustice. One of the results of our efforts will be to create local managers, planners, designers, coordinators, speakers, and contractors in the food justice network.

Robert Jeffrey Sr.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Benote on October 31, 2009 at 12:05pm: So I assume that this includes training and educating communities of color that are at the bottom of the food chain in the Northwest: Native Americans and African Americans. This education would then create an improved community capacity to run, manage, and profit from the food system. Correct?
I understand that Seattle is not Chicago, Milwaukee, or DC, or a Tribal Nation, therefore unable to present a critical mass of color to participate yet in this on-going and expanding arena. I understand the challenges of breeching the apathy and general dismissal of the food security, food safety, self-improvement, and self-sufficiency models that incorporate food, food production, and urban/rural farming within the black and brown communities.
I understand clearly that it takes the supporters and advocates (of any color, creed, or class) that have been working and fighting for years in this fight to help build the community capacity while "we" figure out if we want healthy food, healthy children, and equal inclusion or fancy rims, clothes, and street cred. (that is a broad generalization)
Hopefully your work, OUR work as African-Americans and 1st Nation peoples, will show positive and empowering examples to the local region, like Will Allen and Majora Carter have in the midwest and east.
I look forward to working with you to train, employ, and replace those who currently work with our communities. The goal for me is to replicate, coordinate, and collaborate so that as we move forward the Justice is for and BY us.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ren on April 22, 2010 at 10:49am: Since the food justice model works with people in urban settings instead of on them or against them it will be a success. I applaud the effort. The space has been made. Justice (like respect) is not granted it is earned. The freedoms I enjoy today as a black woman were earned by those before me who fought for and demanded it. They didn't sit back waiting for it be delivered to them.

Making ignorant race based generalizations like these:
1) "I understand the challenges of breeching the apathy and general dismissal of the food security, food safety, self-improvement, and self-sufficiency models that incorporate food, food production, and urban/rural farming within the black and brown communities."
2) "while "we" figure out if we want healthy food, healthy children, and equal inclusion or fancy rims, clothes, and street cred..."
reflects the thinking of someone locked in racial victimhood or who is just a hater.

"Black and brown people" are not all the same, even when they are concentrated in the same area or income brackets. The same behaviors you mention "fancy rims, clothes, street cred" are a reflection of the captialistic consumption that plagues all of US society. People are taught what they have is more important then who they are. Ever watch a TV commerical or seen an advertisment?

Black and brown people(Natives Americans also) have a history of working the land and then being pushed from the land they worked. Furthermore, urban space currently acts on people instead of people being allowed to act on urban space. I would rejoice at a community garden on the scale of what they have in Cuba. A lot of people would. Agribuisness and its political puppets would not!

Race is a social construction as is poverty. The more people recognize these facts the sooner they can free themselves from the mental chains and social bullshit they have accepted based on color and income.

The door to food justice is open. Now is the time to kick it wide open, not stand outside of it whining about the color of invite.

Food Justice looks just like me-an urban dwelling brown skin with a green thumb.; ▶ Reply to This